Why Small Businesses Should Invest in Facebook Page Ad

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the Philippines may not have big marketing budget unlike their bigger competitors. However, when it comes to marketing online, SMEs should consider shelling out money to extend their marketing reach, increase their sales, and grow their business.

The truth is, online advertisement can actually be affordable even for micro and small businesses. And one of these online ads that every small business in the Philippines should consider is Facebook Advertising.

Most Filipinos are Facebook users, whether at their desktop or at their mobile phones and tablets. That is why if you’re doing business in the Philippines, your target market might just be lurking on this crowded social network.

Now, if you already have a Facebook Business Page, as I was saying, don’t hesitate to spend some money to promote your Page. You can buy Facebook Ad as low as Php 200. There are several types of Ads offered by Facebook. But in this article, I will discuss Facebook’s Page Ad. I’ll discuss the other types of Ads in my next article.

So have you tried checking your business competitors online? Have you tried visiting their Facebook Pages? If you can observe Pages of companies on Facebook, you can notice some Facebook Pages that already have thousands or even tens of thousands of likes. Are you wondering how they got those number of likes? Some popular companies, especially marketing and media companies, may earn those likes naturally. But for the rest, especially the companies that have just started, their secret to earning tons of likes in a short period of time is probably paid page promotion.

Having a lot of people who liked and subscribed to your Facebook Page is vital to reaching more audience and potential customers. The more people who liked your page, the more your post will be seen by people. Thus, don’t ignore buying Facebook Ad to promote your Page.

Below is a Page Ad Result when I promoted my other Facebook Page for P162.62. It was actually promoted for P210.00, but I stopped the ad for modification so Facebook only charged me P162.62 (does this mean I can have an ad for P50 or less? 🙂 ).

Based on the Page Ad Results above, it shows that for P162.62, my Page reached 5,042 users and it earned 111 new likes. It also means that 2.2% (111/5,042) of the people reached by the Ad have liked my Page. Furthermore, it shows that for every 1 Like, I spent P1.46 (P162.62/111). Assuming this ratio will remain constant if I will spend P10,000 to promote my Page, I will earn 6,849 new Page likes. Now, how about those companies that can shell out P20,000 every month? In six months, they could earn as much as 82,000 new Page Likes. If I’m not mistaken, a billboard ad can cost P20,000 a month or even higher. So do the Math.

The good thing about Facebook Page likes is that you can keep them as long as you’re giving value to your Page subscribers. Also, as your Page’ followers increase, the doubling effect can happen, which means the growth rate of your Facebook reach can accelerate further as the number of likes in your Page increases.

However, take note that my ad result above may not be the same with your Page’ ads result. It also depends on how you make your Page interesting, engaging, and how you target your ad to specific audience. The figures above may be higher or lower than your results. So it’s always wise to make experiments.

Now, if you want to start promoting your Page through Facebook Ad, and you don’t know how, here are the simple steps to do that.

Step 1. First, you must have a Credit Card or Verified Paypal account for paying your Ad.

Step 2. If you already have a Facebook Page, go to your Admin panel and click Promote Page.

Step 3. Choose your preferences. Target your audience location. If your target audience is nationwide, you can choose Philippines. On the other hand, if your target is local, you can choose your target city. You can also enter 4-10 interests to further specify your target. Then, the age and gender of your target audience. Finally, you can choose your daily budget and the duration of your Ad.

After clicking “Promote Page” and agreeing to Facebook’s Terms and Ad guidelines, your Ad should now be running.

To check your campaigns, ads, reports, conversion tracking, and billing, just go to your Ads Manager by clicking its corresponding menu found on Facebook Homepage’ left sidebar.

Take note that the minimum Page Ad cost may vary from different pages. A newly created Page with fewer likes may have a lower minimum price than a Page that already have a greater number of likes.

So do you want to try it yourself? Remember that a successful businessman or entrepreneur is one who knows how to do the Math and test some experiments. I guess P200 or P500 is not that expensive to try Facebook Page Ad for your business.

Marketing is fun, and online marketing is even more challenging and exciting. If you have the time to do it yourself, then why not? But if you think you need a professional to manage your Facebook marketing, social media, and other online marketing strategies, you can always hire one.

By the way, if you’re thinking that Facebook Page Ad is equivalent to buying people’s likes and paying for fake likes, it’s definitely not. What you’re paying for a Page Ad is an extended reach of your Page. And since the likes you will earn from that ad will come from people who will see your Page Ad and like it, you can ensure that they are real people. In other words, you’re paying for extended exposure, not likes. The likes you earn on a Page Ad depends on how you make your Ad interesting and likeable.

Victorino Abrugar is a business consultant, blogger, speaker and entrepreneur. He's the founder of Optixor, Inc., a digital marketing company based in the Philippines. Follow him on Twitter at @viclogic.

Comments

This is very good advice for those just starting out. Many companies already have social media pages as a standard, but not many are aware that there are things like Facebook ads or Google ads. The only question now is whether they’re willing to spend for it.